Stupid mistake aside, as I ended up with an extra day to spend in Jordan, I decided to make the most of it. After looking at various options, I was able to get a good deal, with it being the low season, on a car and driver to drive from Petra to the airport with a number of stops along the way.Ahmed picked me up at 7:30 from the Sun Set Hotel. We set off for a quick stop at Little Petra, a Nabatean site about 15 minutes or so from Petra. It's a smaller version of the sites that I had seen, and the lunar landscape does appear out of this world. This would be a good place to stop for people looking to get away from the crowds. At 8:00 AM, we were the first ones here and the Bedouin were just getting set up with their wares. The highlight for Little Petra is that there is one cave painting that still survives and that's the only one in both big and little Petra. Amazing.
As in Petra, there is evidence of later occupation of the caves and tombs, most likely by Bedouin tribes. A few years ago, the government, for the sake of preservation, built houses on the hill side above Petra for the Bedouin, and forbade living inside the archaeological site. The village is called Umm Sayhoun, and we drove through this on the way to Little Petra. At that time in the morning, I saw a lot of children on the street, some on donkeys, and looked like they were heading off to the school - there are two: one for girls and one for boys.
Well, given our agenda for the day, Little Petra was really a whistle stop only, for which I was very grateful. My legs were still a little tired from the walk the night before, and just a general tiredness from a very hectic trip so far. We cut across to the Dead Sea road, through some breathtaking countryside. Wow! The lunar, other-worldly landscape continued to follow us through this trip. A word of caution: while the road starts out paved, about halfway through it deteriorates to a road that was paved at one point in its life, but has not seen any asphalt recently. I saw some machinery on the side of the road, so the appearance that work would be done to this soon was definitely in affect. However, it's not happenned yet.
Pictures are better than words to describe the scenery of Wadi Araba, which is what we descended into from the hills of Petra. The landscape of red-rock hills becomes intermingled with the whitish/yellowish hills and finally the landscape opens up and you see Wadi Araba as an arid plain laid out below you. I saw a total of four cars / lorries on this road the whole 30 minutes that we were descending into the Wadi. I am really glad that I didn't plan to do this drive myself - not having much experience with mountain driving, I probably would have turned around the moment that we left the blacktop. Thankfully, Ahmed's 4x4 did just fine, and his driving was excellent.
Once we got on the Dead Sea road, with the red and yellow and brown hills off to our left, and tomato farms off to our left, the road was straight and fairly level, with a number of checkpoints set up along the way. Apparently they were looking for someone in a private car; what Ahmed explained to me was that since he did not have a taxi, but was using a private car, he was expecting to get pulled over and I should not worry.
The scenery for a while was nothing to look at, but it was interesting to see the potash trucks pull in, and every so often we saw a manufacturing complex for potassium. I will have to read up on this to figure out why this is the manufacturing area for potassium. I wasn't sure this was manufactured.
Finally, about 90 minutes or so into the drive, we spot the first signs of the Dead Sea, in the form of pools of water or mini lakes, and salt flats. The water of the Dead Sea is diverted to this area to allow for further manufacturing of its products.
As we drove on, the area ahead of us appeared to be getting more and more developed. We were stopping at Amman Beach, the least expensive, and marketing itself as a "tourist" beach. It isn't associated with any hotels, but it has a huge parking area, and tour buses regularly arrive and disgorge tourists with the beach bags. There are also a lot of taxis in the parking lot. They have a couple of pools, a restaurant, and changing and locker facilities. However, as it's not a resort, there is quite a steep walk to the beach, and doing it in flip flops is not the greatest experience. Similarly,
This was our first stop of the day, to allow me the requisite dip in the Dead Sea. Well, it reiterated to me that I don't like open water, even water that keeps me buoyant! I stayed very close to the shallow end, but did drift for an hour or so, letting the sun and the water do it's thing. Apparently the mud from the Dead Sea has medicinal purposes, and you can also rub the sand on your skin as an exfolient of sorts. I managed not to get the salt in my eyes - yay, and the exfoliation seems to have worked as my skin is really soft right now, but also really dry. It was interesting to see the salt appear as a coating on my skin as the water evaporated. And yes, any open wound was burning a little, and I had a few scrapes from my scrambling around Petra from the two days before. The water on my face tingled quite a bit as well.
I love my mirrored sunglasses, and I've used them quite a bit as a screen. It was a really weird experience for me walking across from the changing area to the many, many steps leading down to the beach. I had put my shirt back on over my swimsuit, and had my towel wrapped around my bottom half, so really, not much exposed, but I still was getting stared at. I don't know how much more or less than other women, but it was not a comfortable feeling, and as a general observation, I've felt more of this uncomfortable feeling in Jordan by the men here than I did in Egypt. The same weird feeling followed me around the mosaic factory that we stopped off at later in the day, and without the benefit of my sunglasses, I felt rather exposed. The New Yorker and the feminist in me refused to be backed down, and I continued on my merry way, but was glad when a tour bus of Germans arrived, and there was more to stare at than just me. Perhaps it is my own neuroses, or it's just that I look "different". Whatever it is, it does not feel "Welcome".
So, anyway, an hour or so later and I was done, and ready to move on. I realized as I was rinsing off that there was going to be no hot water... so a cold shower but nice changing "rooms", and a decent buffet lunch later, we were off to the recently discovered Baptism Site of Jesus. It was unfortunate to see, along the way, how developed the north end of the Dead Sea is becoming, and also interesting to note how much farther away the beach is now from the beach side resorts that are a few years older.
Bethany-upon-the-Jordan is a very recent find, following Jordan's peace with Israel which allowed archaeological excavation of the area. Our arrival at the Visitor's Center was well-timed, and we only had to wait about ten minutes for a bus. The guide who accompanied us, Sameer, did not have the best English, so the supplementary information in my Rough Guides came in pretty handy. Apparently, all the Christian faiths now concur that this indeed is the site where John the Baptist baptised Jesus. From the visitor center, you board a truck - it really looks like a military transport truck adapted for civilian use - with open sides and back - and are driven, past a checkpoint, to an area where it is only about an hour's walk. Around you, the area is extremely arid, and the military presence is tangible in the barbed wire fencing that's been cut through in places and removed to allow for the site to be open to visitors. Also all over the area is sign of recent construction of various types of churches: Catholic, Armenian, Coptic, Greek Orthodox... it is fascinating to see them occupy the same general area.
On the guided tour, we are lead to our first view of the Jordan river, then to the site of the Baptism. I'm not sure what I expected of the Jordan, but it looks like a small canal with some brackish, greenish looking water, and I learned today that it originates at Galilee and terminates at the Dead Sea. Then we move on to the Baptism site, and a mosaic that has been discovered illustrates how this site would have looked two thousand years ago, with the river and several churches and baptism cisterns have been discovered pretty much built right on top of one another. At some point in history there was earthquake and flooding - hard to imagine with today's landscape - and the river became re-routed.We then walk a bit further, to the location where the River Jordan is today. My judgment of distances is severely lacking, but the river is only about ten feet or so across at this point, and on the other side of the river is Israel. The fact that this is still a military area is brought tot he forefront by the armed soldier standing by the baptism platforms, and the jeep with the gun-mount in the shed across from the Armenian Orthodox church adjacent to the site. There were no Israeli soldiers in evidence, just the flag waving across the way. On the walk back, Ahmed mentioned to me that across the river was the West Bank, and it has been 43 years since it became Israeli territory. The whole dynamic here was fascinating and extremely thought-provoking. What thoughts it provoked in me, well, that I'm still sorting out, as shorty after, we were off to Mount Nebo.
Mount Nebo is the site where Moses saw the promised land, and where he died. There is a new church being built and the site is marked by any iron cross. There is a small museum of artefacts, but it is the view out over the Promised Land that is fascinating. The northern edges of the Dead Sea, complete with haze hanging over it, with the plains and the hills of Nablus and Jerusalem and other parts spread out in front... One of the thoughts that did crystallize was that perhaps God should have clarified a bit more who the Promised Land was promised too... perhaps the bloodshed could have been avoided with a clearer deed and title. It also struck me that the course of this trip has lead me to Al-Azhar mosque in Cairo, one of the most respected centers of Islamic theology today, then the Bethany and now to Mount Nebo. Lots more thoughts are stirring and perhaps I will have some clarity one of these minutes, but it is not right now.
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